The Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. automakers are seeking a workaround to avoid increased expenses resulting from President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff policy: relocating manufacturing to China.
“Four major automakers are racing to find workarounds to China’s stranglehold on rare-earth magnets, which they fear could force them to shut down some car production within weeks,” the Journal reports. “Several traditional and electric-vehicle makers—and their suppliers—are considering shifting some auto-parts manufacturing to China to avoid looming factory shutdowns, people familiar with the situation said.”
I’m still of the belief that all of this is about the destruction of the US economy for Russia. He’s a kremlin asset and has been for 40+ years.
He and the billionaires (because he isn’t one) will make millions from short term panic in the market, just as they have already, and vacuum up everything they can to control it all directly and openly just like the Russian oligarchs did post-Soviet control.
This will make the US weaker both internally and internationally, where Russia can try and step in to some of the power vacuum that departure leaves behind. China as well as a side effect, as long as they can deal with the bullshit trade war in the beginning, which they can without issue honestly.
Putin supported Trump with that view. I think it’s wrong to view Trump as Putin’s puppet. Rather, Trump is an agent chaos, and Putin hoped to use that chaos to put Russia on a better footing.
Problem is that Russia can’t do it. They’ve been running on the fumes of a dead superpower for over 30 years. They can’t build their own fighter jets, bombers, tanks, or boats bigger than a destroyer. Not at the scale they need for such a large mass of land. They’ve got oil and natural gas, but everyone is finding the exits on that.
China will step right into the void left by the collapse of Pax Americana. Putin is just handing it to them and doesn’t realize it.
China was facing the possibility of total collapse before the trade war, and they are more vulnerable than the US to the effects of the trade war.
I’m not saying the US will “win” the trade war, (no nation will be better off.) but if China comes through on top it will be analogous to Vietnam, where the US has every conventional advantage but political pressure at home forces capitulation.
Trump doesn’t know what he is doing, but there is a chance he gets his way more or less just because he was handed a deck stacked wildly in his favor.